Be Fearless in the Pursuit of What Sets Your Soul on Fire

The Need to Impress

It doesn’t take much to fool those around us. In fact, we do it all the time. It can be anything from our level of happiness to the amount of pain we are in.

I love soccer, and my boys are both fantastic players, but the way that professional players carry on after being “fouled” is nothing short of ridiculous. If that’s the length that they would go to, to get a free kick or penalty in a soccer match, imagine what lengths we might go to for something more important.

We seem to have this inherent need to impress those around us, and we often go to the extreme to achieve this, even if it means being “not completely honest”. We can put up a front to make the world believe that our marriage or relationship is a fairy tale, when in fact, it might be falling apart (mine is honestly a fairy tale). We post all these things on social media that portray us with halos, when in fact, we are morally unravelling. We communicate to all our acquaintances that our lives are utopian, while, in reality, it’s a nightmare that we wish would end.

The truth of the matter is that we may fool every single person we know (and even those we don’t), but we can never fool ourselves. When you and I lay down our heads at night, we know the truth. Living a lie will eventually become too difficult to maintain. There’s no need to impress everyone else. The truth is that not everybody will like us, and that’s okay. It’s more important for us to love everyone, than to impress them.